Poetry Quarterly hosts an annual poetry contest named after Rebecca Lard, a female poet known for submitting often, and the first known female poet in Indiana. Judging is performed using a blind reading process. Submissions are open to everyone. If you enter any contest this year, make it this one!

Previous issues of Poetry Quarterly are available in paperback from our bookstore. Enjoy some of the finest poetry available today, and in the process you will be supporting poets from all over the world.

Our Poetic Mission

Poetry Quarterly’s mission is to support poets and poetry by maintaining a professional venue for education and publication. We don’t give preferential treatment to poets based on popularity or past accomplishments. We are accessible to all writers who love poetry for the sake of the form and message.

We pledge to only publish what we find most worthy. We never charge poets anything to be published, and we never demean the integrity of the form by including advertisements in our products or on our website.

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Passion

Poetry Quarterly is a Prolific Press publication with a focus on modern poetic style. We accept submissions of all subject matter, and frequently support poets through our “featured poet” showcase.

We publish beautiful issues in paperback, and e-issues for our subscribers online. We reward our poets with a free online subscription and small cash payments. We reward our readers by being highly selective and passionate about everything we print.

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Guests

Guest editors are accepted periodically. Our guest editors oversee the selections of a single issue, and are responsible for soliciting a portion of the poems.

The Rebecca Lard Award is occasionally picked by a guest judge. Judging is typically performed by our editor.

2015 Rebecca Lard Award Winner: Scott Ruescher!

Scott Ruescher is the author of the 2009 chapbook Sidewalk Tectonics, which took the reader on a road-trip from Abe Lincoln’s birthplace to the site of Martin Luther King Junior’s assassination in Memphis, and of a new one, Perfect Memory, published in the fall of 2015 by Finishing Line Press, that features poems set in Central Ohio, Central America, Central Square (in Cambridge, MA), and Spain. He has published poems in recent issues of Agni Online, The Tower Journal, The Hiram Poetry Review, Chautauqua, The Dalhousie Review, Boston Hassle, In My Bed, The Common Ground Review, Zymbol, The Evening Street Review, The Harvard Educational Review, and Poetry Quarterly!

Ruescher is the winner of the Erika Mumford Prize from the New England Poetry Club, in both 2013 and 2014, for poetry about travel and international culture. He administrates the Arts in Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and teaches English part-time in the Boston University Prison Education Program.

Christina Pugh’s fourth book of poems, Perception, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2017. She is also the author of Grains of the Voice (Northwestern University Press, 2013), Restoration (Northwestern University Press, 2008), and Rotary (Word Press, 2004), which received the Word Press First Book Prize.

Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and other publications; and her criticism has appeared in Poetry, The Emily Dickinson Journal, Literary Imagination, and The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945, among others. Pugh is the recipient of a 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in poetry and a 2016 residency fellowship at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy.

She has previously received fellowships and awards from the Poetry Society of America, the Illinois Arts Council, Poetry magazine, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ragdale and Ucross Foundations. She is Professor of English in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and consulting editor for Poetry.

Recently Featured Poet: Christina Pugh

Glenn Lyvers

Glenn Lyvers is an American writer and editor living in a small fishing village on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. His poetry biography can be found at Poets and Writers Magazine. Lyvers maintains a professional bio on LinkedIn. He is a firm supporter of small fledgling presses, often contributing time and poetry. He has been published in the USA and internationally, including works in Calliope Nerve, Camroc Press Review, Chronogram, Clockwise Cat, Contrary, Danse Macabre, East Coast Literary Review, Everyday Poets Magazine, Everyday Weirdness, Flutter Poetry Journal, Leaves of Ink, Mad Swirl, Red River Review, San Pedro River Review, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Shoots and Vines, The Blue Hour, The Houston Literary Review, The Legendary, The Stray Branch, Undertow Tanka Review, Verse-Virtual, Wilderness House Literary Review, Word Catalyst Magazine, and elsewhere.

“It is my privilege to oversee the family of Prolific Press journals, and to work with all the great poets at Poetry Quarterly. I will strive to find the best poems from anywhere in the world, regardless of the poet’s gender, religion, political viewpoints, or popularity. Poetry is for everyone, and I recognize that it’s my responsibility to put the readers first, followed closely by our writers, and then our staff. I pledge to work hard each and every day to be worthy of the trust so many put in my decisions. I’m deeply humbled and thankful to everyone at all levels.”